In the great 1993 chess movie Searching for Bobby Fischer, elementary-school-age prodigy Josh finds himself caught between two mentors: Bruce Pandolfini, an aloof master of the game who favors a slow and risk-averse approach to the board, and Vinnie, who hustles tourists in the park and is always encouraging Josh …
Read More »
A strange virus is causing fatalities throughout Middle America. A group of folks who’ve been chatting online for some time think there’s some bigger, deep-state conspiracy behind it all; they’ve found a series of documents that they believe possess clues as to the nefarious forces behind not just this pandemic, …
Read More »
In 1976, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest became only the second movie ever to sweep the top five Academy Awards: Best Picture; Best Director for Miloš Forman; Best Screenplay (adapted) for Bo Goldman and Lawrence Hauben’s take on Ken Kesey‘s novel; and both Best Actor nods, for Jack Nicholson’s …
Read More »
A funny thing happens during Season Two of Hulu‘s middle school comedy Pen15. Or, rather, it’s a not-so-funny thing, but a very interesting one. You may recall that Pen15 stars thirtysomething actresses Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle (who created the show with Sam Zvibleman) as 13-year-old versions of themselves, opposite …
Read More »
Bess (Brittany O’Grady), the singer-songwriter heroine of Apple TV+’s latest series Little Voice, promises her new guitar player Samuel (Colton Ryan) that he’ll learn the origins of one of her songs when she tells it to the crowd at their first gig that night. Samuel warns her against it, explaining, …
Read More »
Haunted-house stories occupy a lot of prime real estate in horror — they’re easy narrative structures for four-walling tales of things that go bump in the night and the psyche, the perfect go-to Gothic settings for letting literal ghosts of the past come out to play (or slay). They’re also …
Read More »
Andrew Patterson’s soaringly creative, science-fiction mindbender isn’t limited by its 17-day shooting schedule and a micro budget the filmmaker ponied up himself. What makes it one of the best (and most unclassifiable) movies of the year is the hypnotic way it keeps re-inventing itself from scene to scene. As the …
Read More »
If you’re a girl who hangs around a skatepark, you’re considered a “Betty.” It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting on the sidelines watching, or if you’re actually grinding out there right next to the guys — the malecentric, bro-heavy law of the ollie-friendly concrete jungles dictates that any young woman …
Read More »
Bummed-out kids acutely feel the pain of quarantine, so kudos to DreamWorks Animation for letting the fun-and-song-filled fluffball known as Trolls World Tour become the first major studio release intended for theaters to go directly to Video on Demand. The pre-puberty crowd will gravitate to this over-caffeinated sequel to 2016’s …
Read More »
It’s called pica, and it involves wanting to consume things that most folks would consider completely inedible. You might have heard it mentioned on TV, or come across it in an article on psychological disorders. Hunter Conrad (Haley Bennett) has no knowledge of the phenomenon whatsoever; it’s not something that …
Read More »